Sunday, 28 July 2013

When I was a childI thought a handgun in a holsterand the lead colored bullets on the beltwas one of the most beautiful thingsmade by man.Of course at that timeI didn't consciously knowof the phallic significance or symbol,
but it doesn't really matter.It's not the object nowbut the feeling that accompanied, which still remains and comes back,but not for guns and bulletsbut for eternity.It must be the way Sumerians
felt for their Gilgameshand Jews for Davidand Egyptians for Pharaohand anyone for heroes,a hope of eternityfor ever and ever new.A chance not for the objectbut for the soul alone,if that be possible.
But it's too easyto love life too muchand all is gone away, alas,like a shot fromthe gun of childhood.When I was a childI thought of eternity.

Against the lucidity of instinct he opposed the instinct for lucidity:
the invisible is not obscure or mysterious, it is transparent...Octavio Paz on Marcel Duchamp, in Paz: Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare, translated by Rachel Phillips and Donald Gardner, 1978

The
conventional view holds that girih (geometric star-and-polygon, or
strapwork) patterns in medieval Islamic architecture were conceived by
their designers as a network of zigzagging lines, where the lines were
drafted directly with a straightedge and a compass. We show that by 1200
C.E. a conceptual breakthrough occurred in which girih patterns were
reconceived as tessellations of a special set of equilateral polygons
("girih tiles") decorated with lines. These tiles enabled the creation
of increasingly complex periodic girih patterns, and by the 15th
century, the tessellation approach was combined with self-similar
transformations to construct nearly perfect quasi-crystalline Penrose
patterns, five centuries before their discovery in the West.Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture, by Peter J. Lu and Paul J. Steinhardt: abstract of a paper in Science 23, February 2007, Vol. 315. no. 5815

For
all their tantalizing glimpses into medieval scientific knowledge, the
designs of the Darb-i Imam [in Isfahan, taken by Peter Lu as a template
for his thesis] and other Islamic buildings must also be
understood in their religious context. Geometric patterns in Islamic
architecture and ornamentation were used as much for spiritual as for
artistic reasons. As Robert Irwin writes in his study of Islamic art,
such patterns may have been viewed 'as exteriorized representations of
abstract, even mystical, thought' -- aiming to inspire contemplation or
to
make a statement about the imponderable harmonies of a divinely ordered
universe. Sufism in particular is closely linked to the practice of
geometry, above all in the form of symmetries, as a way of giving
physical expression to mystical thought.The
girih designs are thus comparable to Gothic art and architecture in
another sense, namely in their shared ambition to embody spiritual
cogitation and emotion through geometry. The real significance of the
magnificent tiling of the Darb-i Imam lies not in any kind of cultural
one-upmanship about who first conceived a certain idea or technique, but
rather in the remarkable trajectories of ideas and scientific endeavors
through time.Sebastian R. Prange, on the Lu thesis, in Islamic Arts and Architecture, 20 May 2012

9 comments:

Tom – good (for me) to see a new post from you, to selfishly know you are there, in time, pondering eternity.

When I was a child, perhaps like you, I drew the baseball players, their motions, fields, bats, gloves, the ball itself. I spent hours in my room drawing. What was outside was too horrifying. I stayed in the room attempting to evoke depth from the plane of the paper.

The ballfields and the players still soothe me. I especially love the geometry of the stadium, the arc of the throw, the sailing sphere.

I also, like Joe, loved the guns, holsters, cartridge belts, bullets. I drew them too. Also jets, tanks, bazookas, machine guns and soldier-players. I was an American post-war artist boy. The war machines, even footage of nuclear test clouds still fill me with awe, an awful kind of beauty.

These Islamic designs are from a time when the scimitar, a curved weapon was the one of the lethal choices of warriors. “The kilij is a scimitar used by the Turks and the Ottoman Empire; it appeared around the 15th century. The kilij is a unique kind of scimitar that has a slight taper down the straight of the blade until the last third of the sword, when it angles sharply and becomes deeper. After the First Barbary War, a bejeweled kilij was presented to the commanding Marine officer, thus beginning the tradition of granting, to all United States Marine Corps officers, the right to carry the ceremonial weapon as part of that tradition.” (Wikipedia – under scimitar)

Now I have boxed myself into a tiny corner of time (a subset of eternity?) where the Four Horsemen gather, connected to this computer machine. Earlier, it informed me that Monsanto may or may not have a working relationship with Blackwater.

I was glad then to discover your “'exteriorized representations of abstract, even mystical, thought'.” I am grateful for this work you do.

Outside the dome of the sky works its morning magic. Last night the sunset was exquisite and disorderly.

When I was a child I never thought of eternity. I saw beauty. Beauty sustained me when I left the drawing board. Later, pain and wonderment made eternity more apparent. Here, in time, one hopes to be heroic. That would be ideal. That would approach the boundlessness of eternity.

Joe's poems wonderfully always kept that child's own-world quality, a naïvete that has grown up yet doesn't know about faux, has somehow not lost the original direct unmediated experiencing of the world (and words) as realities existing prior to all irony or attitude.

I had that same early sketchpad and crayon subject matter, yes. The green enchanted diamond. Along with the weaponry and explosions, 1940s wartime heroic subject matter evoked by night fears of phantom invasions in the dark, across unseen oceans, dive bombers plunging down black air shafts & c... Kids never knew what was going on back then, knowledge (such as it was) consisted of the warped gleanings gathered from listening behind doors or down dark tenement hallways. A lot of that imagery came back (unexpected, unwanted) after 9/11... still confused, as in the beginning.

Hey Tom, I wonder if the Yanks will win tomorrow? I wonder if Derek will hit another home run? I wonder if PRISM got every word? My son saw a tee shirt that said “USA, Back to Back World War Champions.” I’ll try to write a poem like Joe Ceravolo might have written. I wonder if Eternity sparkles.